What We Left Behind

by Robin Talley

  “By the way, did Nance also tell you she’s trying to set you up with some girl she knows at Wellesley?” she asks. “Because she told me that. I think she was trying to make me jealous.”

  There’s a new strain in Gretchen’s voice. I don’t answer her. I don’t know what to say.

  “Also, I guess you heard Chris and Steven are officially done,” she goes on, rambling now.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “Thank God. Chris told me he’s psyched to go back to school. Apparently there are three different guys on his crew team he can’t wait to ask out.”

  “Really? That’s awesome. Good for him. Also, did you hear Renee and Liz got back together? They posted all these pictures of them making goo-goo eyes at each other out at Great Falls.”

  “Yeah. Renee told me it was supposed to just be a summer fling, but I don’t buy that. She sounded way too lovey-dovey.”

  “Wow,” Gretchen says. “Sounds like you’ve kept up with everything.”

  I don’t respond. There’s no way to answer her without bringing up what we’re not saying. That we’ve both spent the summer talking to everyone except each other. That this is the first time Gretchen and I have spoken since December, and it’s so hard to say anything that really matters.

  There’s an awkward silence. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “Did you ever talk to your mom again? I mean, did you ever tell her...you know.”

  Did I ever tell my mother the truth, is what Gretchen means.

  “Not yet,” I say. “I might, at some point, but there’s no rush.”

  “Have you seen her at all?”

  “Not since that day. I stayed at Derek’s for winter break, and then for the summer I flew straight from Boston to the UK. I just don’t have the energy to deal with family stuff. I’ve got enough to think about without worrying what she thinks.”

  For a moment we’re both silent. I can hear Gretchen pulling in a breath. Finally she says, “So, what do you think?”

  We both know what she’s asking.

  “Pretty much the same stuff I thought before,” I say. “I keep cycling through all the options without ever actually finding answers. I thought for sure I’d have it all figured out by the time this summer started, but now the summer’s ending and I’m not any closer than I was the last time I saw you.”

  “That’s all right.” Gretchen’s voice is soft. “You don’t have to have it all figured out yet. You’ve got your whole life to make sense of it all.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I feel a dull but familiar twinge of sadness. Gretchen doesn’t know what this is like. It’s so easy for her to tell me to take my time. She doesn’t understand how badly I need to know. How it feels like nothing I do counts until I have it all pinned down. How it’s as though everything is on hold until the day I wake up and realize I have all the answers, and I know who I’m supposed to be. I’m a guy, or I’m not. I’m A or I’m B.

  Or both. Or...maybe neither.

  I hate the idea that we’re all controlled by some arbitrary binary system, and yet I’m desperate to find out where I belong in it. Even if my place is somewhere outside the system entirely.

  The one thing I have figured out is that labels and pronouns and all of that don’t matter. Not unless I let them. As much as I love words and language, they’re just human constructs. A word can’t define me. Only I can.

  And I can’t fix all the problems with the English language single-handedly. The one thing I can decide is what I want people to call me.

  He. Him. That’s what I’m using. It doesn’t feel perfect. It doesn’t mean I definitely think I’m a guy. But out of the options I’ve got, he is the one that feels right. For now, at least.

  There’s so much behind all of this. So much. But I swallow down my thoughts and smile into the phone. It isn’t Gretchen’s job to understand everything about me when I can’t even do it myself. I’ve been trying so hard to rely on other people—Gretchen, my friends at school, even my mom—to tell me who they think I should be, but in the end I’m the one who’s got to figure it out.

  “When I get back to campus, I’ve got an appointment set up with Derek’s therapist.” My fingers twitch as I say the words. I know this shouldn’t be embarrassing—nearly everyone I know is in some kind of therapy or other—but it still feels like I’m revealing something dark and secret. “Just, you know. So I can talk to someone other than the inside of my own head.”

  “T, that’s fantastic.” She sounds so happy, I start to wonder if she thinks there’s really something wrong with me. Then I remember that’s not how Gretchen works. She sounds happy because she’s genuinely happy for me. “I’m so glad you changed your mind. That’ll be great.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a start.” I swallow. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t say it. “Gretchen, I—I’m sorry. About everything. I was horrible to you.”

  “What? No, you weren’t.”

  “Yeah, I was. I look back on it and I feel so awful. I was so self-centered that first semester. All year, really. Probably in high school, too. I’ve always made everything about me and my issues. I never ever even asked you about yours.”

  “Well, I never asked you much about your stuff, either. I was always scared I’d say the wrong thing and you’d hate me.”

  I laugh. “Like I could ever hate you. You’re perfection embodied in the form of a blond Birkenstock-wearing Brooklynite.”

  Her laugh is softer. “No, I’m not. You know that, right?”

  Yeah, I guess. I put Gretchen up on a shiny pedestal from the first moment I saw her. I’d convinced myself she was the ideal girl for me before I’d even heard her speak.

  The funny thing is, I was right. People—even Gretchen—are too complicated to be perfect.

  At that moment, though, she was perfect for me. Maybe we were even perfect for each other.

  It’s so weird, how you can love someone long enough for that love to change. I didn’t know love could change, but it can. Just like people.

  “I think I do,” I say.

  “Hey, T!” Chris’s voice booms in from the kitchen. I swear he’s gotten louder since high school. “Are you going to make me eat all these hot dogs by myself? Because I can, but it’s not gonna be pretty.”

  “Who is that?” Gretchen asks. “That sounds like Chris.”

  “Er. Yeah. It’s Chris.”

  “Wait. Where are you?”

  “I’m here.” I smile. My shoulders are starting to relax. The tension is flowing out of my body. Gretchen forgave me. “I’m at Chris’s house.”

  “Wait, here? In Maryland?”

  “Yeah. I flew in this morning. I’ll go back up to Boston tomorrow so I’m staying with Chris tonight.”

  “Wait.” Gretchen’s stumbling over her words. “You’re here?”

  “I’m here.” I let out a tiny laugh.

  Gretchen’s laughing, too. “Wait. So I can—can I come over? Can I come see you?”

  “That would basically be the most amazing thing ever, yeah. If you want to. I would’ve told you sooner, but I didn’t know if you were still, you know. Mad, or anything.”

  I hear a jingle of keys on the other end of the phone. “I’m coming right now. I’m getting in the car.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard all summer.” I’m not even exaggerating. My grin is so wide, my face hurts.

  “Okay, good.” I hear a car door open and close. “I have to get off the phone now because I don’t have my hands-free thingy. Stay at Chris’s house. Do not go anywhere, do you hear me?”

  I laugh. I’m actually going to see Gretchen again. To be in the same physical space as her. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you soon, though. Bye!” />
  “Bye,” I echo. The phone clicks off.

  I stare down at the blank screen. The phone is warm in my hand. I feel more awake than usual. More alive.

  I need to go tell Chris she’s coming over, but I stay where I am for now, letting my eyes fall closed. It’s too much to take in.

  This is really happening. Gretchen will be here soon.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen when she gets here. But not knowing is okay.

  Actually, the not knowing might be the best part.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from LIES WE TELL OURSELVES by Robin Talley.

  Acknowledgments

  Sometimes there are characters you know so well you forget they’re fictional, even if you’re the one who made them up. That’s how I feel about What We Left Behind. Toni and Gretchen have been living in a corner of my brain since I first decided I wanted to be a writer. Their story changed and evolved over the years, and so did I. But I never stopped loving them, just as they never stopped loving each other.

  I can’t quite believe it’s time for these two to climb outside my head and live on a printed page, but here we are. And we all had a lot of help getting to this point.

  Thank you to Jim McCarthy, agent extraordinaire, who gives wise advice at every turn, and who simply got this book and these characters in a way that meant so much.

  I’m so grateful to my amazing editor, T. S. Ferguson, who always asks the right questions, from the big ones (“Is there enough closure on this plot thread?”) to the little ones (“Are you spelling this Clueless reference correctly?”) and knows how much every question matters. Thanks, too, to the whole Harlequin team that made this book a reality—Natashya Wilson, Lauren Smulski, Emma Alpern, Emily Krupin, Jennifer Abbots, Lisa Wray, Jennifer Stimson and so many more, plus the UK folks—Anna Baggaley, Elise Windmill and the rest of the fabulous Mira Ink crew.

  Thank you to all my amazing writer friends who offered beta-reader notes, moral support and wine-drinking assistance while I worked on this book. Anna-Marie McLemore, aside from being the best Lambda Literary Writers Retreat roommate ever, you were one of the very first people to read this manuscript, and your notes on it helped to make it what it is. Thanks to the DC/environs writer crew—Lindsay Smith (thank you so much for thinking up the awesome title!), Jessica Spotswood, Caroline Richmond, Miranda Kenneally, Andrea Colt, Kathleen Foucart, Tiffany Schmidt and many, many other awesome people—for your notes, your advice, your friendship and your tips on staying sane. And thank you to the Fourteenery and the DC MafYA, aka the coolest kids on the block.

  Thanks to Erica George for showing me around and letting me sleep on her futon when I came up for my Harvard research trip, and to Georgiana Konesky, my Harvard beta reader, who told me no one calls it Wigglesworth (it’s just Wigg, you guys). Thanks to Sarah Schrag for letting me steal the croissants story, and to Nadine Heyman and Jennifer Brody for the NYU and Harvard inspiration, and the olden-days fun.

  Thanks to my family—Mom, Dad, Mary, Steve, Matthew, Josh, Aaron and the whole extended clan—for supporting me through this crazy writerly life.

  And thank you most of all to Julia, for all of the things. I <3 you.

  If you enjoyed What We Left Behind, don’t miss Robin Talley’s thought-provoking and critically acclaimed debut, Lies We Tell Ourselves!

  “A piercing look at the courage it takes to endure.”

  —Kirkus Reviews on Lies We Tell Ourselves

  Lies We Tell Ourselves

  Set in Virginia during 1959 school desegregation and told through dual perspectives, Lies We Tell Ourselves follows Sarah, one of the first black students to integrate into a white school, and Linda, the white daughter of the town’s most vocal opponent of desegregation. Forced to team up on a school project, Sarah and Linda’s feelings toward each other are mutual distrust and loathing. But as they spend time together, each of them is forced to confront not just their own limited notions about race and politics but also deeper truths about themselves, including the fact that they may be falling for one another.

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  Lies We Tell Ourselves

  by Robin Talley

  LIE #1

  Jefferson High School, Davisburg, Virginia

  February 2, 1959

  THE WHITE PEOPLE are waiting for us.

  Chuck sees them first. He’s gone out ahead of our group to peer around the corner by the hardware store. From there you can see all of Jefferson High.

  The gleaming redbrick walls run forty feet high. The building is a block wide, and the windowpanes are spotless. A heavy concrete arch hangs over the two-story wood-and-glass doors at the front entrance.

  The only thing between us and the school is the parking lot. And the white people.

  We’ve all walked past Jefferson a thousand times before, but this will be the first time any of us steps inside. Until today, those big wooden doors might as well have been triple-locked, and we didn’t have the key.

  Our school, on the other side of town, is only one story. It’s narrow—no wider than the Food Town. Our teachers put boards in the windows to cover the cracks in the glass, but that’s not enough to stop the wind from whistling past us at our desks.

  Our old school, anyway. Jefferson is supposed to be our school now.

  If we can make it through those big brown doors.

  “They’re out there all right,” Chuck says when he comes back. He’s trying to smile, but he just looks frozen. “Somebody sent out the welcome committee.”

  No one laughs. We can hear the white people. They’re shouting, but the sound is too disjointed for us to make out the words.

  I’m glad. I don’t want to hear. I don’t want my little sister Ruth to hear it, either. I try to pull her closer to me, but she jerks away. Ruth will be fifteen in two weeks, and she already thinks she’s too old to need help from her big sister.

  “If anything happens, you come find me, all right?” I whisper. “Don’t trust the teachers or the white people. Come straight to me.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Ruth whispers back. She steps away from me and links arms with Yvonne, one of the other freshmen.

  “What are you gonna do if they try something?” Chuck asks Ennis. He keeps his voice low, trying to blend in with the dull roar coming from the school, so the younger kids won’t hear him. Chuck, Ennis and I are the only three seniors in our group. Most of the others are freshmen and sophomores. “They’ve got some big guys on that football team.”

  “Never mind that,” Ennis says, raising his voice so the others can hear. “They won’t try anything, not in school. All they’ll do is call us names, and we’ll just ignore them and keep walking. Isn’t that right, Sarah?”

  “That’s right,” I echo. I want to sound in charge, like Mrs. Mullins, but my voice wobbles.

  Ennis holds my eye. His face looks like Daddy’s did this morning, when he watched Ruth and me climb into the carpool station wagon. Like he’s taking a good, long look, in case he doesn’t get another chance.

  Ennis sounds like Daddy, too. My father and Mrs. Mullins and the rest of the NAACP leaders have been coaching us on the rules since the summer, when the court first said the school board had to let us into the white school. Rule One: Ignore anything the white people say to you and keep walking. Rule Two: Always sit at the front of the classroom, near the door, so you can make a quick getaway if you need to. And Rule Three: Stay together whenever you possibly can.

  “What if they spit on us?” one of the freshmen boys whispers. The ten of us are walking so t
ightly together down the narrow sidewalk we can’t help but hear each other now, but none of us makes any move to separate. “We’re supposed to stand there and take it?”

  “You take it unless you want to get something worse after school lets out,” Chuck says.

  There’s a glint in Chuck’s eye. I don’t think he’ll take anything he doesn’t want to take.

  I wonder what he thinks is going to happen today. I wonder if he’s ready.

  I thought I was. Now I’m not so sure.

  “Listen up, everybody, this is important.” Ennis sounds serious and official, like the NAACP men. “Remember what they told us. Look straight ahead and act like you don’t hear the white people. If a teacher says something to you, you don’t talk back. Don’t let anybody get you alone in the bathroom or on the stairs. And no matter what happens, you just keep walking.”

  “What if somebody tries to hang us from the flagpole?” the freshman says. “Do we just keep walking then, too?”

  “You watch your mouth,” Chuck tells him. “You’ll scare the girls.”

  I want to tell him the girls are plenty scared already.

  Instead I straighten my shoulders and lift my head. The younger kids are watching me. I can’t let them see how my stomach is dropping to my feet. How the fear is buzzing in my ear like a mosquito that won’t be swatted away.

  We round the corner. Across the street, Jefferson High School sweeps into view. The white people are spread out across the front steps and the massive parking lot. Now I know why we could hear the crowd so well. There must be hundreds of them. The whole student body, all standing there. Waiting.

  “Just like I said,” Chuck says. He lets out a low whistle. “Our very own personal welcome wagon.”

  Ahead of me, Ruth shivers, despite her bulky winter coat. Under it she’s wearing her favorite blue plaid dress with the crinoline slip and brand-new saddle shoes. I’m in my best white blouse, starched stiff. Our hair is done so nice it might as well be Easter Sunday. Mama fixed it last night, heating the hot combs on the stove and yanking each strand smooth. Everything’s topsy-turvy with school starting in February instead of September, but we’re all in our best clothes anyway. No one wants the white people to think we can’t afford things as nice as theirs.